From: Elizaphanian (elizaphanian@tiscali.co.uk)
Date: Sat Feb 08 2003 - 12:53:03 GMT
Hi David, also Wim, anybody else interested in the topic.
Shortly before Christmas, I invited you to give an account of Pirsig's
conception of ritual. My original request is in the archives at:
http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/0617.html
What I had in mind was two-fold. Firstly some description of Pirsig's
conception that we could (ideally) agree on, that would be short and clear.
As I put it in another post, my desire was to find 'clarity, not truth'.
Secondly, that in the light of that account, we would be able to find a
better understanding of where and how we disagree; that is - are our
disagreements a) over interpreting Pirsig, b) over applying the MoQ to
religious ritual, c) about our different understandings of religious ritual,
or d) something else again? I don't expect us to end up agreeing, but I
think that a search for clearly articulating our disagreements would be
worthwhile all the same.
You unearthed a wealth of material from ZMM and Lila - and indeed from other
sources - but I would like to respond with an attempt at a summary, rather
than, at this point, going back to those substantial posts. So the following
is my attempt at summarising 'Pirsig's conception of ritual'. Ideally, with
your and anybody else's comments, we might be able to work up this text into
something robust (although it would be good to keep it to this sort of
length). Here goes:
~~
According to Pirsig:
1. Ritual is the static latch of the social level; it functions to preserve
dynamic breakthroughs.
2. Ritual preserves a particular society in existence. It contains and
reproduces those patterns of behaviour which maintain that society above the
biological level, and which give that society its own identity. This has
maintained human societies in existence for at least tens of thousands of
years.
3. Ritual is the source of the intellectual level. Intellectual principles
are derived from reflection on ritual practices.
4. Religious rituals enable social-pattern dominated people to progress to a
higher level of awareness. Freedom from the social level comes from mastery
of those rituals, not their rejection (ie 'putting them to sleep').
5. This resolves the paradox of ritual and freedom, for both reflect
dharma - Quality.
~~
This is my take on Pirsig's account as given in the last few pages of
chapter 30 of Lila. All comments welcome.
Sam
"I am not altogether on anybody's side, because nobody is altogether on my
side, if you understand me... And there are some things, of course, whose
side I'm altogether not on; I am against them altogether." -- Treebeard
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